


Duality: First Contact

by Mythril (fantacination)



Series: #SheithWeek2k16 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Pacific Rim-ish AU may be more accurate, Pre-Slash, Sentinel/Guide Bonding, Sheith Week 2016, Sheith Week 2016: Together/Alone, Soulmates, Still Space Mecha But Different, age gap, just saying, space au of a space show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-23 22:59:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8346163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantacination/pseuds/Mythril
Summary: Day 2: Together/Alone Sentinel/Pacific Rim AU“From now on, you two will be a unit. You will eat together. Train together. Sleep together. You’ll be looking at eachother’s mugs for the next three years-- if you survive. Thirty percent of all trainee pairs don’t reach their second year. Only half graduate and manage to pay back their debts to the state.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sentinel/Guide AUs aren't all that common in comparison to a/o/b and such, but even after doing a little research on this (going back to the original canon it came from), it doesn't seem like there's a lot of detail available. So I've messed with it a bit and tried to mash a few things in there.
> 
>  **TLDR:**  
>  Sentinels are the physical elite (soldiers), their five senses tuned up to superhuman levels.  
> Guides are mentally elite (strategists), empaths who are trained to become attuned to and help stabilize their Sentinel 
> 
> Post alien apocalypse, Sentinel/Guide pairs are the only ones who have the ability to defend against the alien invasion.

“From now on, you two will be a unit. You will eat together. Train together. Sleep together. You’ll be looking at eachother’s faces for the next three years-- if you survive. Thirty percent of all sentinel pairs don’t reach their second year. Only half graduate and manage to pay back their debts to the state.”

The man was tall, shoulders crisp in his navy blue uniform despite the beginnings of loose skin. His head had been shaved, leaving only the black of his goatee. He was perhaps fifty, if a day. That and the lack of anyone else on the stage implied that he was normal, auxiliary staff in the space station.

He stood on a small raised platform built in the same utilitarian gray as the rest of the hall, looking out into the darker mass of gray that comprised the trainees.

“Which means if you want to be part of the continued success of the Allied Earth Defense Forces, you will do what you’re told, work hard, and keep yourselves out of trouble. Some of you will be deployed back home to keep Vermin in line. The best of you will be deployed to the Fort Mars and become proper Deuce Pilots.”

There was a wash of excitement in the room, strong enough that even standing apart, Shiro could feel it under his skin. He clenched his fingers in his pockets. The high emotion buoyed his own anxious mood, nerves jittering enough that he lost focus, mind and eyes wandering.

Shiro glanced to his side, looking at his Sentinel as the instructor told them of their duties and laid out rules.

His Sentinel didn’t look like much, truth be told. He was a little on the scrawny side. Most of the other Sentinels in the room were easily a head or so taller. But he was still young. Sixteen, maybe. He’d probably awoken young, too. His face was thin, with large, dark eyes, capped in equally dark hair. The cuffs on his uniform were folded back three times and his arms were crossed. That wasn’t so unusual, except, Shiro realized, his hands were clenched tight, knuckles white.

“Hey, are you okay?” Shiro asked, alarmed. It took a moment to find the name he’d learned scarce minutes ago. ”Keith?” Unconsciously, he reached out towards him, for his hand.

The moment his fingers touched Keith's skin a current ran through him like a live wire. It lit places in his brain he'd scarcely begun to explore. That he'd only started to become aware of since the accident.

Instantly, he was swamped in vertigo. Information crashed against his mind like a ten foot wave, forcing his head down with its weight. Keith couldn’t have awoken too long ago. How were his senses already so _strong_?

Shiro felt sick. The sparse breakfast he’d consumed was threatening to come back up the back of his throat. Most of it was sound and scent and touch- Keith’s eyes were shut, the feel of his teeth on his lip melding with the scent of a hundred bodies in the hall, the grate of the instructor’s rough voice deafening in a sea of machinery whirring, the strange sense of voracious vacuum from outside the station. It pooled and mixed together, until Shiro wasn’t sure what he was, where he was, or what he was touching, like being drunk on a roller coaster.

His hand was tight around Keith’s wrist. He wasn’t sure he could let go even if he wanted to. Combined, their fear threatened to spill. Shiro reeled it back, imagining it tied into a tight ball. The binding was fragile, but he didn’t dare second guess it.

He swallowed and grasped Keith’s other hand, blind. Instantly, the sensation doubled, but it was more manageable, too, less like an assault and more like an immersion. He passed the rapids of sensation and found himself in deep, dark water. Here was an implacable stubbornness, rapidly crumbling to panic and pain.

He shouldn’t be doing this. More experienced guides than a greenhorn who’d read a couple of books had fallen prey to the sinkhole of a Sentinel’s senses.

This, now, was one of the reasons Sentinel-Guide pairs were often buried together.

But he couldn’t just stand around while someone was in pain. _His Sentinel_ was in pain. Keith was a stranger. But when he’d opened that too-white door and found Shiro on the other side, he’d tied their fates together.

“Keith? Keith, listen to my voice. Just my voice. I’m right here.” He pulled Keith close, so his heartbeat was the loudest thing in their ears, his voice a booming echo.

He felt Keith’s consciousness shift, focusing on that point.

 _Shiro._ It’s not a word or a sound, not an image. It was a thought, as natural as if he’d dreamed it himself, a confusing tangle of scent-heartbeat-north.  

“That’s right. It’s me. Shiro,” he murmured in the space between them. “You know me. I’m the one you picked. Your Guide.”

Keith’s breathing calmed, following the studiously even breaths Shiro himself was taking, counting at the back of his mind even as he talked Keith back in soft murmurs, just enough to be heard in his oversensitized hearing.

Keith opened his eyes. Color was suddenly a taste in his mouth. But they weren’t drowning.

Relieved, Shiro let a hand go and opened his own.

Keith was embarrassed. He could feel it as surely as he could see the flush spread on his cheeks, his skin so thin and pale that he could almost imagine seeing past it.

See through to the bright constellation of sparks that made up his mind, whirling and bright, it pulsed, like a jellyfish made of stars, spinning lazily in place.

It was and wasn’t what the books had described other Guides seeing, the totem of their partner’s soul. He could see the connections, the bright spots, humbled by its vastness, its startling intimacy and all it implied.

Then, the disconnection was like a rubber band snap, making Shiro hiss in pain. The exhaustion hit him almost immediately after, like a ten ton mallet to his back. He collapsed, only to have Keith catch him, one thin shoulder buckled against Shiro’s chest.

Shiro felt his own face heat, weak as he was, being held up by the kid he’d been trying to help.

Around them, a few of the other trainees had noticed.

The instructor had already left, leaving the paired trainees to mill around and get better acquainted with one another. Orderly lines had morphed into a slowly drifting sea of gray.

“What’s the matter with you two?” A redheaded male trainee to the side questioned. “You don’t look so good. Both of you.”

“We’re fine,” Keith said, answering for them both. “He’s just hungry. He’s a big guy, he needs the fuel.”

The redhead’s partner, a brunette girl, frowned. “You were the one saying that. About following your voice.”

More of the trainees were turning to join their conversation.

Shiro touched his neck, self-conscious. “Ah…”

“Follow? You mean like you were Guiding him?” The redhead interrupted. “No way, we’re not supposed to do that, yet. How did you do that? You could've gotten sunk!”

“Hold up, _you're_ the Guide?” One of the others interrupted. “You’re huge-- how old are you?”

Shiro was… old, for a trainee. His bulk, earned from years of labor in the tunnels, felt ungainly in a sea of far more delicate Guides who better fit the image of the ideal. Among them, he was a clumsy ox in a row of swans.

Keith tilted his chin up. He didn’t have much of a choice in this crowd.

“He's _my_ guide,” he said, and shot a glare around them as though someone would try to take Shiro away. “And he's perfect.”

Shiro choked on a laugh. It was ridiculous. Here he was, a Guide at twenty when most started at seventeen, being defended by the smallest Sentinel he'd ever seen.

But that Sentinel had picked him, in a room of perfect blankness, with his senses opened to full throttle, he’d picked his heartbeat out of all the others and made him his North.  

And Shiro could love him a little for that. For the dazzling constellations he could see inside him. For the feel of a thin, surprisingly strong shoulder against his side.

Nobody could tell exactly what it was that drew Sentinels and Guides together. Only that it worked, and that was enough for a world that desperately needed them.

It was enough for Shiro.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Probably the first in a series of connected drabbles. _Please_ ask me about this AU, my notes are longer than the fic. Also, there is Hance, but they come a couple of years later, since most Sentinels/Guides fully awaken around 17-18. ~~Why do I keep adding AUs to write.~~
> 
> ALSO LOOK I FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW TO FORMAT. :D;;
> 
> As always, you can find me @PepperPaprika on tumblr.


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